Table 4 Data Declaration

January to June 2015-2016 Offenses Reported to Law Enforcement by State by Cities 100,000 and over in population

The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

General comment

This table provides the number of offenses known to law enforcement for the first 6 months of 2015 and 2016 in cities with populations of 100,000 and over.

Important note about rape data

In 2013, the FBI UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a revised definition and removed the term “forcible” from the offense name. The UCR Program now defines rape as follows:

Rape (revised definition): Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. (This includes the offenses of rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object as converted from data submitted via the National Incident-Based Reporting System [NIBRS]).

Rape (legacy definition): The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.

Since the implementation of the revised definition of rape in 2013, not all agencies/state UCR programs have had the ability to change their records management systems to accommodate the change. Therefore, this report provides a column for rape (revised definition) and a column for rape (legacy definition). The data shown in the rape (revised definition) column include those from agencies that reported rape under the UCR revised definition as well as converted data from agencies that reported data for rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object via the NIBRS. The data shown in the rape (legacy definition) column include only those agencies that reported rape under the legacy definition via the Summary Reporting System (SRS); it does not include any converted NIBRS data.

Methodology

Data from law enforcement agencies whose resident population falls below 100,000 are published in this table for two consecutive years. If the population remains below 100,000 thereafter, the agency’s data are no longer published in this table.

When the FBI determines that an agency’s data collection methodology does not comply with the national UCR Program’s guidelines, the figure(s) for that agency’s offense(s) is not included in the table, and the discrepancy is explained in a footnote.

The FBI does not publish arson data in this table unless the UCR Program receives data from the agency for the first 6 months of the year.

Population estimation

For the 2015 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2010 decennial population counts and 2011 through 2014 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2014 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2015 population estimate.